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Hostwinds back to being spamming website friendly?


skydealer

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Posted

I recall Hostwinds getting in a bit of hot water a few years back when SpamHaus gave them a black eye for ignoring the spam complaints about their client.  According to some reports they cleaned up their act.

Unfortunately, it appears they are back to being spammer friendly.... with a catch.  I've been in a bit of a battle with their Abuse department and apparently their policy is that they will continue to host websites indulging in illegal spamming, even if it includes hacking into other email accounts and servers, just as long as the emails don't come from a Hostwinds IP.

I've been receiving SEO spams on one of my website's form mailers with the domain listed being hosted on Hostwinds at IP 23.254.179.179.  After contacting Hostwinds abuse department for over a month now does nothing.  The spams continue and Hostwinds still happily provide a haven for their website.  Since the spams come through my site's form mailer I can't send this through SpamCop.

I'm also receiving quick loan spams on my Gmail account.  This turns out to be another site hosted on Hostwinds at IP 129.107.58.30.  These spams are coming from what appears to be a hacked email account at the University of Texas.  Hostwind's replies to my complaints? 

Quote

Although the website in question is hosted here on our network, the email server is not, as such we cannot process this complaint.

Is anyone else running into this roadblock with Hostwinds as far as them allowing spam websites to operate on their servers, just as long as they send their mass emailings from some other source?  I've even sent multiple emails to Peter Holden, the kid who is the CEO of Hostwinds (peter@hostwinds.com) and so far I have not received back a single response. 

Has anyone else had any success at all with getting their abuse department to cooperate?  Thanks

Posted

Hostwinds refuses to take any actions against their clients who spam, just as long as they use another server to do their dirty work.  I have had multiple problems with several domains residing on their IP addresses, with the spams either coming through website form mailers or a 3rd party hacked email account.  Even though the spams list the Hostwind hosted websites their "abuse" team refuse to take any actions.

Today's response was as follows:

Hello,

Unfortunately, the issue here is where the spam is coming from. We cannot investigate an issue with spam sent from another network. The originating IP is outside of our network and hosting a site here does not violate our terms of service in this regard. If the mail itself was coming from our network it likely wouldn't even leave the borders as we use strict outbound mail filtering via MailChannels on our entire network. Simply put, we cannot take a site down based on a mail sent from another network.

Thank you,
Guy H
Senior Support Technician

guyh@hostwinds.net
Skype: hostwinds.guyh

Posted

I haven't had anything pointing to them for a long time but there is the point of view that "malicious spam" could take a  website down, what I mean is that if you wanted to cause damage you could send spam on behalf of microsoft and eventually they would have to hunt you down and kill you. As an example one of the most common things that are found in a spam are "urn schemas" which identify the layout of the spam html but although the location of that document is completely innocent it shows up as a website link. I do agree that hosters should look at an accusation of spamming but its up to them if they kill a website as they could be sued for breach of contract. I know it sounds spammer friendly but innocent bystanders need protection.

  • 2 years later...
Posted

I've been getting about 6-8 spams daily promoting websites hosted by Hostwinds for weeks. I've complained so many times by email, by chat, by phone. It's getting worse not better. Hostwinds is happy so long as the emails originate elsewhere. It's every sort of spam from boner pills to emails pretending to be from Amazon. They block reports made by way of SpamCop because they simply don't care. Hostwinds needs to be re-blacklisted by Spamhaus. I hate them. Here are domains spamvertised in just the past day. Tomorrow it will be a whole new batch. 

attkidsliveset.icu notfoolslims.icu patrice-jain@onlyedcures.icu flexiblesurvs.info giantsonbloods.icu addsecurekids.icu geoghs.icu faithsurvs.info hopeoncbds.icu

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

Don't give up on reporting to/via Spamcop. Even though the recipients of the reports might appear as if they don't care, the data gleaned from the spam you submit still helps Spamcop build and maintain its blackist.

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